“Really. I didn’t know ‘clumsy’ qualified as an actual tactic.”
“Wait until you get out there,” she snorted. “It’s different with a crowd watching.”
The matches continued one after the other, some good, some bad, none of them fatal. Then it was my turn. The Fury—Uathach, or whatever she was called—strode into the middle of the ring, her gait low and loose like a hunting cat’s. I took a deep breath, adjusted the two swords in their scabbards on my hips, and squared my shoulders.
Elka saluted me with a fist to her heart. “Luck.”
I saluted her back. “And two good sharp swords.”
I stepped onto the sand, feeling the heat through the soles of my sandals.
I could feel Cai’s gaze on me, just as hot.
Mine was the last match of the day. The crowd was both restless and seething with anticipation. What would the Fury do this time, they wondered?
And who was the hapless gladiatrix they’d sent to fight her?
I felt like bait on a fishhook, and it made me angry. I reached for my swords and drew them with a fast, showy flourish. The crowd wanted spectacle? I would give it to them. I threw my arms skyward, clashing the swords above my head, gazing defiantly. The crowd threw up a smattering of encouraging cheers, nearly drowned out by heckling laughter.
The Fury drew back her lips in a feral snarl and waited. She wasn’t armed like any of the other gladiatrices; she bore no shield, no sword, no spear or trident or net, just a pair of axes held tightly in her scarred fists. I frowned, wondering what she would do with them—and then leaped madly out of the way when she threw one at my head! I barely had time to realize that my bout was already under way as the Fury sprinted past me to retrieve her thrown axe. Without breaking stride, she plucked it up from where it had stuck, haft pointing up, in the sand. Then she turned and charged straight at me, axes whirling as she swung them side to side.
I distantly heard Sorcha and Elka shouting commands at me.
It took me a few desperate moments of frenzied blocking and ducking to realize that Uathach’s way of fighting wasn’t very different from mine. Different weapons, to be sure, and the curved blades of the axes gave her a greater chance to hook my swords away, but the movements—the side-to-side slashing and the wide dual swings—followed a similar flow. The axe blades caught the sunlight at the edges of my vision, and my own blades flashed up to meet them. Sparks flew, pale in the bright air, as we chased each other back and forth across the sand. We were nearly evenly matched, and I didn’t think it was the kind of fight the Fury usually encountered. At first, I wondered if she would grow frustrated, but I only saw in her eyes the slow-dawning light of pure joy.
Oh, this one truly is mad, I thought.
And yet, there was a secret part of me that understood that joy. This was the kind of warfare I’d dreamed about as a little girl. The strength, the speed, the skill . . . this was the dance I’d longed for—
Maybe without the kick to the stomach.
I was down on all fours in an instant, sucking sand-gritty air through my teeth. The crowd roared, sensing yet another victory for the Fury. I reared back and slashed wildly at the space in front of me with both swords to ward her off, but she wasn’t there. Uathach had spun away, retreating to a far-off distance. I could barely hear the hoots of the crowd over my own wheezing gasps. But when my adversary threw back her head and howled a bone-chilling battle cry . . . that I heard.
I lifted my head and, in that moment, saw what she truly was.
Shoulders hunched, head jutting forward, arms stretched out like wings with iron feathers, shrieking and wide-eyed, she was Death. The Terrible One. She was Vengeance. She came at me. Legs pumping, arms raised and ready to bury those axe blades in my head and heart, she ran. There was nothing else for me to do—I couldn’t block, I couldn’t slash . . . I was on my knees and out of breath. In the very last instant before her attack, I slammed the hilts of my twin swords together and thrust them out before me.
The Fury never even broke stride.
She impaled herself on my blades.
Right through her heart.
That’s the thing about good sharp swords. Given the right conditions, they will cut through almost anything—even armor, always flesh. Mine had found the weakness between the links of the Fury’s ragged chain-mail tunic and then the space between her ribs. Her forward momentum did the rest.
I flinched, and then her body slammed into me, throwing me back down to the ground. For a horrible moment, I lay pinned to the sand by the weight of her, and I felt panic rise in my throat. I thrashed and struggled and heaved her off me. She rolled limply away, and I saw that there was still that strange, joyous light in her eyes. But it was fading fast.
“No,” I murmured, crouching to hold her face between my hands as blood bubbled up and spilled out the sides of her mouth, staining my fingers.